I almost lied and said no. I didn’t want to disappoint him, though he’d made it his life’s work to disappoint me.
‘He’s not here for you,’ I said. ‘He promised.’ Though Bergström had promised no such thing. ‘He just wants Freya Dorfmann.’
‘Then he’ll have to kill us first.’
‘Or you could just let him have her.’
He looked at me as if I’d just pushed a knife between his ribs.
‘You could let him take her, come home, and be a husband to your dying wife and a father to me.’
‘Brigit, listen—’
‘Or you and your men can die here, and they’ll take her anyway.’ I couldn’t let that happen. I hadn’t come this far to see him torn from me in the middle of the desert. ‘You know what she is. You know what she’s done. Just let them have her!’
‘Brigit, I can’t. I made a promise.’
‘Then break it!’ He didn’t look as though he might, not even for a moment. And I realised then that it wasn’t Freya Dorfmann who was holding him here. ‘She’s dead. You owe her nothing.’
I felt a hand slip under my arm and haul me to my feet. My father rocked back on his heels and stood up. It was supposed to be a show of vitality, though he winced and I heard his knee pop. ‘Hello again, Jesper.’
I wrestled my arm away from Bergström and moved to stand next to my father. Bergström seemed surprised, disappointed even. ‘A few short months ago you were going to help me kill him.’
Was I? It was so long ago I could scarcely remember.
‘Things change,’ I said and took my father’s hand. I squeezed it but he didn’t squeeze back.
Instead he said, ‘You can’t have her, Jesper,’ and I could see that I’d already slipped from his sphere, cast aside – again. Why was everyone else more important to him?
‘Erik, please don’t make this more difficult than it has to be.’
As if on cue, Bergström’s men slowly reached into their jackets.
‘Oh, it’s already “difficult”, Jesper. You really think Israel will let you do this? Drag a national hero – a blind national hero – from her home, and kill her workers in the kibbutz she helped build? You will destroy Israel, Jesper, before it has even begun.’
‘We do not intend to kill anyone.’ Bergström glanced at me, pushing reassurance, seeking approval. He cared what I thought more than my own father did.
‘And when the people learn how MOSSAD pursued her to face crimes that she had no idea she was—’
‘It wasn’t us,’ Bergström said sharply. ‘MOSSAD has not pursued anyone inside Israel’s borders. That is not our mandate. These men,’ he nodded towards the gunmen he’d brought with him, ‘are police officers who are here to take a suspected war criminal into custody, following information passed to them from a foreign third party.’
Shit.
My father said, ‘You expect anyone to believe any of that? No matter how you play it, Jesper, the people will see this for what it is: MOSSAD spying on Israeli citizens when they’re supposed to be looking outward for threats beyond our borders. You’re just the SS by another name.’
His companions whispered and nodded.
‘And where is this mysterious third party of yours, this investigative genius that uncovered a Nazi mind-control experiment buried for a quarter of century?’
Please don’t tell him. You don’t need to tell him.
Jesper smiled and looked pointedly at me.
My father’s eyes switched between us, waiting expectantly for an answer already laid out for him. His eyes stopped moving, finally settling on me. ‘Brigit, did you… did you help him?’
I didn’t have to answer. He blinked slowly and looked to the ground. ‘Oh Bright, you have no idea what you’ve done.’
And that was it. Whatever dream I’d had of bringing him home, of reuniting my family, of living a normal life – it slipped away and I let it go.
‘What I did,’ I said, ‘what I tried to do was build a life for Monica and me, while you hid yourself here so you could keep promises made to the dead. Don’t you dare judge me.’
Bergström scratched his chin and smiled.
The orchid workers had become restless while my life, which I’d sought to piece together, unravelled further. They nudged one another and pointed in the direction of the house. The circle began to widen. They laid down their makeshift weapons and took a step back. My father turned. Bergström followed his gaze, and for the first time I saw fear in him. He wrung his hands in front of his waist and chewed at his lip.
So I turned too, and I saw her.
She’d walked from the main house, gliding across loose stones and sand in her bare feet without making a sound, finding her way with long deliberate strides and echoes none of us could hear.
My father called out to her, ‘Go back to the house.’
‘I will do no such thing, Erik Brenna,’ she called back.
She was tall, a shade under six feet, slim and almost royal, her thin white dress long enough to sweep across her feet. She carried a bouquet of orchids in the crook of her arm. She climbed the steps that led to the square, pinching the dress at her thigh to keep it from dragging on the ground. Even as she approached I could see that everything Silje Ohnstad had written about her was true. She was much older but as radiant as I’d pictured her; her skin, darkened by years under the desert sun, had taken only a few deep lines around her eyes and shallow ones around her mouth. I suspected she rarely smiled. Her hair was bound in a thick braid that showed only a few strands of white woven through the shadeless black.
She stood between Bergström and my father, momentarily inclining her head in my direction. ‘Jesper,’ she said. ‘Back again so soon.’
‘It’s been six months, Freya.’ He was nervous, off-balance. Something about her had stripped him of his self-righteousness. He glanced down at his feet, just in case his courage had fallen between them.
‘Time and the sand,’ she said airily. She handed him the bouquet. ‘For Pasha,’ she said and then she turned to me. ‘You smell familiar.’
‘My daughter,’ said my father.
Freya’s face lit up like the sun, and a wave of guilt swept over me. ‘This is Brigit? My God! What are you doing here? I never thought I’d ever get the chance to… Let me look at you.’ She reached forward, and without asking me she swept her hands across my forehead, across my nose and cheeks, down to my chin… Her fingers were strong yet gentle, though the skin of her fingertips was rough and calloused, and in spite of the heat her hands were oddly cold.
I tried to feel offended.
She stepped back and smiled, her eyes boring into mine. ‘You are as pretty as your mother, Brigit. Welcome.’
Bergström laid the orchids on the ground and cleared his throat. ‘Brigit has become quite an expert on you, Freya.’
‘Don’t, Jesper,’ said my father. ‘Just don’t.’
Freya slipped into her quizzical mask and pointed her eyes at him. ‘Don’t what?’
While my father shook his head and dropped in frequent ‘Lies, all lies’, Bergström recounted and embellished, speaking the truth while twisting it out of shape.
Freya nodded occasionally, tilting her head towards me, listening to my heart breaking.
Bergström finished with a flourish; his final word was ‘traitor’. I caught it though I’d stopped listening some time ago.
‘Well,’ Freya said to me, her chest heaving. ‘You’ve turned out to be quite the clever little detective.’ She managed to keep the loathing from her voice, which I was grateful for.
‘When she started this she could barely read,’ Bergström said with what I could have sworn was pride. ‘No education, no social skills, no sense of personal hygiene…’
Please stop talking.
‘Little more than a street urchin really.’
Well, fuck you then.
‘And yet she managed to piece all this together by herself,’ said Freya. ‘With no help from you or MO
SSAD.’
My father smiled and shook his head.
‘If you had stayed quiet, Freya,’ Bergström said, not caring whether or not she believed him, ‘if you had just lived out your life here with your fucking flowers, if you had not attempted to seek political support abroad—’
‘You mean if I had built a prison for myself.’
‘If you had just lived out your life in the desert then we would have let your part in all this stay buried. We could have found a way to deal with the other survivors that did not involve you. We would have let Silje Ohnstad’s memory of you stand for all time.’
Christ, I thought, you as well?
Freya smiled, something she clearly wasn’t used to. ‘You know, I remember you as a lovesick little boy who’d spend hours following me around the village.’
Bergström trembled, both enraged and off his guard. ‘You are seeking office. If you succeed then that will be four Iscariots holding high positions within the Israeli government. MOSSAD cannot allow that.’
My father said, ‘I had no idea it was up to MOSSAD.’
‘MOSSAD’s sole purpose is to protect Israel.’
‘From foreigners.’
‘If you do this, Jesper, then Israel will think you are simply trying to remove one of your most outspoken opponents – which is precisely what you are trying to do. There is no evidence Iscariot even worked.’
‘You and the other three,’ Bergström said, turning to Freya, ‘all seeking to castrate the secret service, all seeking to stop our operations to eliminate Nazis in hiding, all opposing our attempts to occupy territory to secure our borders. Have you ever asked yourself why all four of you hold such dangerous ideas and parade them publicly? Do you not think that you say these things because you are still in the thrall of your Nazi masters?’
His words wounded her, but she made a brave attempt to hide it. ‘Or is it perhaps those of us who have suffered the most under the Germans have no wish to see Israel emulate them.’
Bergström stared at her and then snapped his fingers. The police officers came forward. The orchid farmers stepped up to block their path.
‘No!’ Freya raised her hand.
My father said, ’You are not going with them.’
‘Yes, Erik; I am.’
‘I cannot let you.’
She stepped towards him and caressed his chin, pressing her forehead against his. ‘Once again I release you, Erik Brenna.’
‘And I’ve told you; you cannot do that,’ he said. ‘Only she can do that.’
‘Oh Erik. She is gone.’
And I thought I was the only person who saw this. Silje Ohnstad held so much sway in death, I couldn’t imagine what it must’ve been like sharing the mountains with her when she was alive. I could barely imagine there being room in the mountains for anyone else.
‘Freya, the promise I made to her remains.’
‘Listen to her,’ I said glumly. ‘She’s gone. Has been for more than twenty years. Even she’s accepted it and she loved her just as much as you did.’
There was an entry in Silje’s diary about the day my father had discovered them in the hills. She’d described how mechanical he was; how he’d thrown Freya to the ground, forced her legs apart; how he was going to mutilate her with his knife, before he came to his senses… There was a flash in his eyes; it only lasted for a moment, but he turned it on Freya and I imagined the way he was looking at her now mirrored the way he looked at her then, back on that mountain when the two women he loved more than life itself had ripped him in two.
I was glad Freya couldn’t see it, even for the moment it lasted.
She placed a gentle hand on my arm, but it wasn’t enough to stop me. ‘You don’t love us,’ I said to him. ‘Not like you loved her.’
‘Brigit,’ Freya began, ‘that’s not—’
I pushed her hand away; it was enough to silence her.
‘I get it, but you have to leave this place. If not for Monica and me then do it for yourself.’
‘I’m going with them, Erik,’ said Freya. ‘I cannot hide here anymore. If they want to fight me, if they’re willing to use your daughter to do it, then let’s do it in the open.’
He said, ‘Then let me fight with you. It’s what she would have wanted.’
‘She’s dead!’ I shouted. ‘Don’t you understand that! Jesus! She’s dead and the only reason you’ve been this woman’s slave for the past twenty years is because you think being close to her is the same as being close to the woman who betrayed you for her!’
I wish I’d spoken more quietly. The orchid farmers tried to look elsewhere. Bergström coughed and ordered the police officers back to the cars. He turned and spoke to Freya. ‘If you are not back here in fifteen minutes I will come for you.’ Then he limped away, back towards the arch.
The farmers began to protest, and Freya had to calm them, tell them that this was best for everyone. They finally began to disperse, still protesting as they returned to the fields.
That left the three of us. The Fólkvangr triangle.
Freya must’ve felt the discomfort in the air; she announced she would return to the house and pack her things.
Which left my father and me. We looked away from each other. He scuffed his feet in the sand, and I tried to think in which direction Scandinavia lay. I was of a mind to walk home.
‘I know I haven’t shown it,’ he said. ‘But I’m happy to see you.’
‘Did you ever love her? My mother, I mean.’
He was silent for a moment, trying to decide between mercy and the truth. ‘Not as I should have.’
The truth it is then.
‘She knew this, and she accepted it for a time. Lisbeth and I were both so… broken. Silje Ohnstad broke me, and every day I was with your mother, my despair broke little pieces from her.’
‘And that’s why you left?’
He whispered ‘Mostly’ under his breath.
‘And what about me?’
He had no answer for that, neither of us did. Even in death, Silje Ohnstad was too powerful a force to be reckoned with. I looked away from him and I thought I could see an ocean beyond the archway, but it was an illusion, the sky reflected in the sand.
‘I have never known her as Lisbeth,’ I said. ‘Only Monica. Monica Fossen.’
‘We had to change our names. Many came to believe I had betrayed Fólkvangr, and there was no one left alive to tell them otherwise.’
‘No one aside from my mother.’
He nodded. ‘She couldn’t. In a way, she believed I deserved it.’
‘Perhaps she was right.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I think that perhaps she was.’
‘You’re not going to come home with me, are you?’
‘You’re staring at your dreams, Brigit, like you’re staring at the sun; and they’re blinding you to the truth that is as plain as day. You don’t want me back in your life. You don’t need me.’
‘And she does?’
‘I made a promise.’
‘You made a promise to my mother, your wife! You said that you would love and honour her until your last breath. Why does one promise mean everything to you, while another means nothing?’
His blood rushed to his face, a sudden anger that reminded me of Monica, but held rigidly in check. He wanted to tell me something; his lips moved slightly, mouthing the words to exorcise them from his conscience. ‘You should go home,’ he said. ‘Your mother is ill. You should be with her.’
‘And where should you be?’
He looked towards the house and that was his answer. So instead of being led by the nose I decided I should find answers of my own.
‘Where are you going?’ he called after me.
‘Where does it look like I’m going?’ I shouted back. ‘I’m going to the house. I want to talk to her.’
Chapter 62
I walked past the acres of orchid fields, the scent changing with the colours. The flowers closest to the house smelled l
ike ground vanilla, strong and sweet. I guessed these were her favourite, while the ones that carried soft cinnamon were furthest away.
A flight of narrow steps took me to the main house. The door wasn’t locked so I pushed it aside and stepped into a wide hallway painted white along two walls and the ceiling; the third wall was painted blood red. The paintings and photographs were mostly of Fólkvangr and the Ohnstad family.
Seven pedestals stood at equal distances along the left wall, each carrying a small ornament that seemed strangely out of place in such a grand hallway: a wooden mixing bowl and spoon; an ancient sewing machine; a Luger pistol; a woodsman’s knife with JO carved into the handle; a goatskin eyepatch.
The next pedestal was for a thick book with a grand leather cover labelled, in French, as the Old and New Testaments. When I flipped over the first few pages, I found it wasn’t a bible at all; it was a huge book of erotic pictures. The furthest pedestal carried a glass case containing a neatly folded wedding dress.
The Ohnstads were a complicated family.
I expected to see more about Silje Ohnstad; she had been her lover, after all, but then I remembered that the woman was blind so why would she need pictures? All the photographs she would ever need were kept safely inside her head. So all this was for us: mortals whose memories of Fólkvangr would fade with time. The house was a museum as well as Freya Dorfmann’s home.
‘What do you think?’
I spun round and almost knocked the mixing bowl from its pedestal. She’d managed to get within three feet of me without making a sound.
I made excuses and apologies which she graciously waved away. ‘Would you like something to drink?’ she asked. ‘Strange thing about the desert; people in it don’t seem to know when they’re thirsty.’ She moved gracefully through to the drawing room without waiting to see if I was following her. There was a sensuous pull about her; I could see how Silje Ohnstad had lost herself.
The drawing room carried the same pattern of décor: two sides and the ceiling painted cream, and then a garish blue for the right wall. There were more pictures, mainly of Norway. I recognised a painting of the mountains above Bergen where Fólkvangr used to be.
The Quisling Orchid Page 53